When NASA launches its Europa Clipper orbiter toward Jupiter’s moon, Europa, in October, the craft will carry numerous messages on an engraved metal plate that will honor Earth’s connection with it.
NASA said there is strong evidence of a vast ocean beneath the moon’s icy crust that contains more than twice the amount of water in all of Earth’s oceans. Water is a central theme of the spacecraft’s message, which includes an engraving of the U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.” The craft also carries a silicon microchip with more than 2.6 million names as part of NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign that asked people to submit their names to be carried on the voyage.
The engraved panel is made of the metal tantalum, measures about 7-by-11 inches, and has graphic elements on both sides. This artwork includes waveforms converted from audio files that linguists collected of the word “water” spoken in 103 languages. The waveforms are etched into the panel and radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for water, NASA said.
“The content and design of Europa Clipper’s vault plate are swimming with meaning,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “The plate combines the best humanity has to offer across the universe—science, technology, education, art, and math. The message of connection through water, essential for all forms of life as we know it, perfectly illustrates Earth’s tie to this mysterious ocean world we are setting out to explore.”
The Europa Clipper is expected to begin orbiting Jupiter in 2030 after a trip of 1.6 billion miles. It will make repeated close passes of Europa, gathering data about the subsurface ocean, crust, atmosphere, and space environment. The electronics for those instruments are housed in a massive metal vault designed to protect them from Jupiter’s punishing radiation. The commemorative plate will seal an opening in the vault.
The panel’s inner surface will be inscribed with the Drake Equation, developed by astronomer Frank Drake in 1961 to estimate the possibility of finding advanced civilizations beyond Earth. Additional artwork on the inward-facing side of the panel will include a reference to radio frequencies considered plausible for interstellar communication, NASA said.
